The Different Types Of Web Conferencing

The Different Types Of Web Conferencing Related Information:

The life-support of businesses and organizations today is communication. Advances in technology have made it very easy for people to communicate. There is the telephone and also e-mail, which has literally made the world a much smaller place. But both these types and ways of communication lack an essential aspect of communication, and that is personal or face-to-face contact.

Being able to see a person’s facial expressions sometimes becomes more important that what is being said. Documents needing to be reviewed are impossible to do if you cannot see what is being changed or marked up. In such situations Web Conferencing is of great help. Web conferencing can also be of different types such as:

Web Meeting: This type of web conferencing is a virtual meeting on the web. Participants in the meeting can be interactive. There can be flow of information back and forth, from presenter to participant and vice-versa. Anyone can initiate a conversation and other people participating in the web meeting can respond. Web meetings can also include document sharing, chatting in real time (live instead of pre-recorded speech), and the options of having video (visual) pictures.

Webinar: A webinar is much like a seminar on the web. The presenter shares information, with the participants being able to ask questions or respond. Like a web meeting, a webinar also has interactive possibilities but not to the extent as is possible in a web meeting.

Webcast: A webcast is another type of web conferencing. A webcast can be compared to a broadcast on TV, the only difference being that this type of broadcast is on the web and not the TV. In a webcast, the possibilities of interaction between the presenter and the audience are minimal, and often there is no such possibility. A webcast can be broadcasted to hundreds of people at the same time.

Online Presentations: This is another way in which web conferencing can be used. Online presentations can be made over the web with the help of slide shows, web based chat, and streaming audio/video. The participants can see the presentation when they log in to the web conference, and can also communicate with the presenter, either through their telephones or through web based chat.

Online Collaboration: This kind of web conferencing is very useful and a format that is most commonly used in web conferencing. Web collaboration can be text based, include an audio conference, or can be in combination with a live video feed. Collaboration offers live viewing of shared documents, files and papers, and allows for their modification and changes over the Internet. In web based collaboration, participants can do a whole lot more than view each other and speak with each other. They can effectively exchange any documents and edit them together. The participants can also interactively share existing information, as well as compile new data. All edits and alterations are made in real-time during web collaboration. There is no special program or software needed for web collaboration, and thus it serves the needs of people who are in different locations and have to meet to work on any documents or files.

The above types of web conferencing can broadly be classified into three formats - meetings, collaboration, and presentations. Within these three formats, there are various ways in which web conferencing can be used.